VIDEO: Ex-chief: Report clears Braintree in 1986 shooting case

Files found late Saturday have answered some questions about why Amy Bishop, charged in the shooting deaths of three professors at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, was investigated and let go after the 1986 shooting death of her 18-year-old brother at their Braintree home. Officials say further action into the high...

Files found late Saturday have answered some questions about why Amy Bishop, charged in the shooting deaths of three professors at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, Ala., was investigated and let go after the 1986 shooting death of her 18-year-old brother at their Braintree home.

Braintree Police Chief Paul Frazier questioned whether law enforcement officials at the time properly handled the case, in which the shooting was ruled accidental.

A crucial State Police report on the 1986 investigation located Saturday appears to have settled the controversy – for now. Officials say further action into the high-profile case is uncertain, but they are still searching for Braintree police records related to the investigation.

“There will be no further comment at this time by the police department,” Frazier said Sunday in a statement.

A planned meeting next week between Norfolk County District Attorney William Keating, Frazier and Mayor Joseph Sullivan has been called off.

“The request for a meeting from Chief Frazier was predicated on his belief that there had been no State Police investigation of this (1986) shooting,” David Traub, spokesman for Keating, said Sunday.

The March 1987 State Police report detailing the investigation was found in the district attorney’s office’s archives Saturday night, Traub said.

“Since there are no police investigators or prosecutors presently in our office who were involved in the investigation in 1986-87, that archival material constitutes the information at our disposal,” he said.

On Sunday, retired Braintree Police Chief John Polio, 87, said the report that had been found proved that the Braintree Police Department acted correctly in December 1986 in turning over the investigation to State Police.

Attorney John Kivlan, who was Norfolk County First Assistant District Attorney in 1986, said Sunday that Polio had followed legally prescribed procedures and that the death of Bishop’s brother was ruled accidental.

On Saturday, Frazier said when he discovered that the files of the 1986 shooting were missing from the Braintree police archives, he called officers involved in the case to try to fill in some of the details. He said he did not speak with Polio, who lives in town.

Former Norfolk County District Attorney William Delahunt, a U.S. representative for the South Shore’s 10th Congressional District, is on a six-day trip in the Middle East and could not be reached for comment.

Frazier said his conversations with police officers led him to believe that Bishop was released during the booking process in 1986 by order of Polio.

Page 2 of 2 - Polio said Sunday that the late Capt. Theodore Buker had been the officer handling the case.

Bishop’s mother, Judith, was active in town affairs and was serving on the personnel board at the time. She now lives in Ipswich, but could not be reached for comment Sunday.

In 1986, The Patriot Ledger reported that Bishop, who was 19, accidentally discharged a shotgun in her bedroom and then carried the gun downstairs and asked her brother to help her unload it. It was then that the gun accidentally discharged a second time, fatally wounding Seth Bishop, investigators said at the time.